Anne Frank's hiding spot, carefully detailed in her diary that scores of school children have now read, was roughly 450 sq. ft.
The size of the spot is tough to visualize, as is the entire circumstances of why exactly Frank and her family had to hide in an attic for several months.
But the Florida Holocaust Museum, based in St. Petersburg, is looking to enlighten visitors on just that with the addition of Anne Frank: Let Me Be Myself exhibition, along with a virtual reality component that allows visitors to go back in time to Frank's "secret annex."
"This isn’t some far off thing; it's real," Erin Blankenship, the museum's curator of exhibitions and collections, said. "This is a teeny room Anne had to share with an adult man, so you see the living conditions and really, if you think about it, before they were captured the living conditions were better than others in hiding and were still horrible. These experiences are meaningful and become personable."
The virtual reality is provided by Oculus Education, a branch of the well-known makers of the virtual reality headset. It will be a seated experience, allowing up to six visitors at a time to utilize the headsets. Users will be able to be transported — at least virtually — to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, where they can have a 360 view of the rooms Frank lived in.
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"One of the things about virtual reality is some experts are seeing it is helping produce empathy," Blankenship said. "When you talk about teaching the Holocaust, to change behavior and view of one another in an empathetic way is super important. And that's one of the reasons were experimenting with it."
Blankenship believes the use of technology will only increase in the coming years. Down the street, the Dali Museum uses artificial intelligence to make Salvador Dali come to life and in the coming years, Blankenship believes wants to use holograms to bring former Holocaust survivors back to life.
"Someone in the experience can ask the hologram, 'What was your family life like? or, 'How did your sister die?' And they will answer as if they're right there. It's hundreds of hours of filming a a survivor and then using a special computer program to help them answer. We feel now is the time. We have a few survivors that we have, that have stories to tell, and they're dying. And soon, we won’t have any left to tell their story."
The exhibit runs until Jan. 24, 2021. Reservations are needed to use the virtual reality component and can be made here.
